Abstract
When new parties enter parliament, they pose challenges to the established actors. Not only do they represent ideological niches. They also present themselves as alternatives to the establishment, antagonize the mainstream parties, and are oftentimes genuine populists. However, little is known about how populism shapes the political discourse within legislative bodies. How does populism characterize the behavior of new parties, and how do other parties respond to the arrival of their contesters? This chapter sheds light on this issue by examining how the parliamentary discourse in Germany changed after two non-populist (Greens, PDS) and two populist parties (The Left, AfD) entered parliament. Employing a quantitative text analysis with Wordfish, the results of this inquiry show that, first, new parties often make use of populist language. Second, the arrival of new contesters does not necessarily increase polarization on their core issues. Third, the advent of genuine populists in parliament does not necessarily result in the other parties mimicking their approach. Whereas the former take a unique position with regard to their populist framings, the established parties distance themselves from them. In this respect, the result of populist representation in parliament is mutual disassociation rather than convergence.
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Lewandowsky, M., Schwanholz, J., Leonhardt, C., Blätte, A. (2022). New Parties, Populism, and Parliamentary Polarization: Evidence from Plenary Debates in the German Bundestag. In: Oswald, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Populism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80803-7_37
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